A rash of street robberies is on ice for now, but things could pick up in time for the holiday shopping season, third-district police say.
“Any district may have crime trends, but Silver Spring tends to have more,” third district deputy commander Lt Stephen Auger told Silver Spring’s urban-district advisory committee Thursday.
“It’s nothing alarming, but it’s something we’re looking into,” he said.
According to the most recent crime report (Nov 7), eight robberies were reported in Silver Spring below the Beltway. In one incident, a victim was assaulted and robbed on downtown’s Ellsworth Drive on a recent Saturday night. In another incident, a victim was robbed at knifepoint near the Silver Spring Public Library on a Friday morning.
“There’s always an amount of that in an urban environment, … but it’s nothing alarming,” Auger said.
To keep bad guys in check, Silver Spring’s police station has borrowed plain-clothes cops from other districts to patrol the area. On top of that, five rookie cops who trained in Silver Spring will become permanent fixtures in December, as will six more newbies trained in other districts, Auger said.
“I’d prefer 36 more officers, but something’s better than nothing,” he quipped.
Auger also said ’tis the season for higher rates of shoplifting, robberies and thefts from cars. Holiday shoppers should stow goodies out of site and exercise an ounce of caution, he advised.
“You can depend on the police to do their job, but you have to depend on yourself not to be a victim,” Auger said. “You’ve gotta use your head.”
Photo courtesy of the Barrett Township (Pa.) police department.
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Silver Spring tends to have more crime. Why?
Anyway, so nice to know that there was a knifepoint robbery right down the road from me. These things happen everywhere, but the crime reports for DTSS show a disturbing number of violent crimes every frakkin week, and those are just the ones that get reported.
A greater police presence will help, but this is a societal problem. For the usual reasons, there’s an awful lot of dysfunctional “families” and young people out there. Until that is solved (Full employment, anyone? Mass birth control, anyone? Making children be a privilege and not a right, he asked wistfully), we’ll continue to have violent crime.
For those reading this, don’t try to be a hero when faced with an armed opponent. Give him your money. Remember, aside from avoiding trouble through environmental awareness, the best defense is the Nike defense: run away!
In response to Springvale Roder… I can appreciate what your saying, if only it was that simple. I have had a very hard time adjusting, being sent here after a relatively, “violent crime” free 23 years in Germany. Slavery was ended in the later 1800’s, but it wasn’t till the end of the 20th century that the law finally caught up.
Kids will be kids, and these young black gang-bangers are the first generation that can even think about the American dream. It was the same in Germany when the wall came down. East Germans wanted the same pay & same jobs, even though they didn’t have the skills. Many young blacks are not educated because their parents did not have the opertunity (and not by choice).
100 years after slavery ended, Billie Holliday sang “Strange Fruit”, about black men hainging from the trees in the south. Yes there is a problem, and yes, much of it has roots in modern black society, but it is first and formost a white problem. Until a “quality education” and not a no child left behind bullshit diploma, is available to all Americans, we will have race problems.
Just an FYI …
The perps in this recent spate of street robberies are of various ages and ethnic backgrounds.
In the Ellsworth Dr mugging described above, the suspect was a black teenaged boy. The mugger near the library was described as a tall, blond white man between 16 and 25 years old.
Bad guys (and gals) come in every shape and size.
Just in case anyone thinks otherwise, please note that I did not specify race in my message. Dysfunctional families occur across the board, and the dysfunction is for the usual reasons.